MELISSA BEAN FLOATED AS CFPB HEAD – Buzz on Friday had Rep. Melissa Bean (D-Ill.) possibly getting tapped as the first Consumer Financial Protection Bureau head depending on the outcome of her too-close-to-call reelection race, in which Republican Joe Walsh maintained a slight lead as of Sunday afternoon. But a possible Bean nomination is not sitting well with reformers on the left who say the moderate Illinois congresswoman is far too close to the banking industry. Said one administration official: “It’s not clear she would be acceptable to the reformers.I disagree with that last sentence. It's pretty fucking clear that she would not be acceptable to reformers.
If you had asked me to make a list of the worst people to make head of the CFPB, Melissa Bean would be very close to the top. Jane Hamsher breaks down her record:
That's a fucking shit show.
- FACT: Financial reform is the only major Democratic action of the past two years that is popular with a majority of the public, by a margin of 61-37.
- FACT: Audit the Fed, one of the key provisions of the financial reform bill, was something both liberals AND conservatives fought for, and was supported by 80% of the public. Only 9% opposed it. Bean voted AGAINST Audit the Fed.
- FACT: Melissa Bean and the New Democrats were able to shoot the House derivatives plan full of holes.
- FACT: Three in four Americans (76%) wanted the government to block or recover the bonuses AIG paid its executives after taking TARP money.
- FACT: Melissa Bean introduced an amendment to gut a House bill to limit bonuses for TARP recipients. It passed.
- FACT: President Obama and the DNC made attacks on Chamber of Commerce money one of the tentpoles of the 2010 campaign.
- FACT: Melissa Bean “earned the most support of any incumbent from the US Chamber of Commerce,” per a Sunlight Foundation study of how the US Chamber of Commerce used former government officials as part of their lobbying team on financial regulation. Bean’s former Chief of Staff John Michael Gonzalez was one of the nineteen former government officials they hired.
- FACT: Bean received over 40% of her 2009 campaign contributions from the finance, insurance and real estate sector.
If the White House nominates Melissa Bean it shows they have absolutely no interest in keeping with the goals of the CFPB, and are 100% captured by the banking industry. The classic Republican tactic is not to destroy the institution, but to put someone in charge that has absolutely no intention of doing the job. Installing Mellisa Bean at the CFPB would do exactly that.
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